


Similar Reasons

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: Midnighters Timestamps [13]
Category: Adam (2009), Charlie Countryman (2013), James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies)
Genre: Crack, Deals, Fluff, Illegal operations, M/M, Talking, Weird yet appropriate crossovers, negotiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 03:30:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7026772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i> “My good man, we’re not the FBI,” James replies calmly. “We’re much more efficient.”</i>
</p><p>  <i>“You’re a fucking prick, is what you are,”</i></p><p>  <i>“That is inarguable,” Q mutters, and James just smiles.</i></p><p>In short, Midnighters meets 00Q</p><p>Because why the hell not, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Similar Reasons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SLSmith22](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLSmith22/gifts).



> An amazing idea from one of our greatest friends. Thank you, always, for your endless support bb!

The click of his glass sounds like a gunshot and James hums at the burn on his tongue. The man in front of him sets his own glass down and reaches for the bottle again.

“Names?”

“I can do a lot with names,” James replies, settling with feigned ease further back in the kitchen chair. “Names that need not concern you after I go.”

“They don’t concern me now,” the man responds, his accent a heady purr of indiscriminate Eastern European origin. Not Russian, no, but somewhere with that in its history. English name, though - Nigel.

“Romanian,” Q murmurs through the hidden receiver deep in James’ ear. He’s always been good at knowing just what James is thinking.

Across from him, Nigel the Romanian - who boasts a criminal history nearly as long as Bond’s lists of accomplishments - sits at absolute odds with James himself. Nigel sits before him in a sleeveless shirt and haggard jeans, a tattoo of a dancing woman on his throat. Bond has come besuited, Savile Row, empty holsters at his sides and on his leg from when the man shoved him to a wall no sooner than he opened the door. A rough pat-down and snarled curses relieved James of his weaponry.

It hardly matters. He hasn’t come here for a firefight anyway.

“What concerns me,” Nigel continues, as he sucks down another shot as if it were water, “is the other names that know those names. If the map is drawn between them, it finds me at the center. That’s a fucking problem.”

“A map can hardly be drawn when nothing is done to those named.”

Nigel snorts and James finds his head tilting in amusement. In his ear, Q sighs, but says nothing on the matter. He’s hardly the bullheaded stupid man M had made him out to be. He’s much more than a bullet fired by someone else. James finds he can certainly respect that.

“You’re telling me that when you have the names you won’t immediately act on ‘em? Fuck that.”

“I suppose I can’t ask you to believe me,” James shrugs. “I’m not here for trust and a drink, though the drink is appreciated.”

“Fuck you,” Nigel adds to his previous statement, with a wry smile as he lifts his shot glass again. “You showed up at my goddamn doorstep.”

“Not without quite a lot of work, and more resources than most of the world has access to,” James tells him. He waits to drink his own, but holds it as Nigel does, their elbows on the table. His guns are laid before the man, pointed towards him. They won’t fire, of course, without Bond’s fingerprints pressed to the biothermal grips, but Nigel doesn’t need to know that. Nor does it particularly matter, when the man has his own firearm holstered at his side.

“You may not need trust,” Nigel says, “but I goddamn do. The problem is that when you fucking sing like a little bird, someone’s going to want to cage you.”

“You’ve been caged before.”

“Not for that, and never fucking again. I’ve never been a fucking snitch,” Nigel snarls. “I’ve never named names. Do it once and pigs know you will again if they put the fucking thumbscrews to you, until they finally leave them in and you can’t imagine what your life was like before you ever had them. It cripples you. And after enough time, someone’s going to come along to put you out of your misery - if not one of those names, than the pigs that fucking took them down.”

He drinks, hissing this time as it goes down. His glass claps loud back to the cheap linoleum table, out of place in the well-appointed West Village brownstone where Bond has found him. Nigel refills his own before Bond’s drink has touched his throat. Nigel doesn’t notice that Bond’s only had half of it before he fills it again.

“So tell me why the fuck I should even consider putting myself or my partner at risk for that. Tell me why the fuck I shouldn’t simply snap your smug English neck.”

“Because he wants to get out,” Q murmurs through James’ earpiece. “There’s blips on his expenses, the house itself, which has been wiped of all ownership history… you don’t live this obviously on the radar if you’re thinking of continuing a life of criminality.”

“Because everyone needs help to disappear,” James says aloud, threading his fingers together at the edge of the table. “And we have the resources to make that happen.”

“Witness fucking protection?” Nigel snorts. “Fucking please.”

“My good man, we’re not the FBI,” James replies calmly. “We’re much more efficient.”

“You’re a fucking prick, is what you are,”

“That is inarguable,” Q mutters, and James just smiles.

“What makes you think I want to fucking disappear? What makes you think I need your fucking help to disappear?”

“You’re not a man fond of running,” the agent tells him, crossing his legs beneath the table. “And thus you’re inexperienced with hiding, and, likewise, disappearing. I am more than happy to help in exchange -”

“I didn’t come to you asking for fucking help,” Nigel says, voice raising. “I didn’t come to you at all. Nothing in my life fucking involves you.”

“How is this man,” Q wonders aloud, “running such an intricate proxy network?”

“You showed up on my door, armed to the goddamn teeth.”

“It’s the thickest onion I’ve ever seen,” marvels Q as James tries not to roll his eyes. “It doesn’t make any sense. He isn’t the type.”

“That isn’t what someone does when they’re fucking bargaining. That’s what they do when they’re making a threat. I don’t like threats when it comes to bar brawls, and I like them even goddamn less when they’re made in my home.”

“Nigel?” A small voice, unexpected, piques from the room behind Nigel. Bond’s eyes snap past the man to the darkness beyond.

“Is it - down!” Q says. Bond jerks from his seat and in an instant Nigel’s gun is trained on him, a snarl on his lips, as Q mutters, “Peter, get off the desk!”

“Nigel, are you nearly done swearing at the man who knocked nicely on our door?”

James keeps his eyes trained on the door, not the gun, drawn quickly from Nigel’s side on reflex that overrides even those sitting on the table before him. From the bedroom - or what James assumes to be the bedroom - comes Nigel’s reason to want to disappear.

“Holy shit,” James murmurs, brows up in genuine surprise for a moment.

From the bedroom pads a lithe little thing, a younger man so much like Q for a moment that Bond feels a tremor in the grounding of his world. Wild curls made unruly from sleep, wide blue eyes framed by long lashes. Pretty features, but masculine still, and a lean body scarcely concealed by a shirt too large for him that James knows in an instant belongs to the man seated across from him.

Q wears Bond’s shirts to bed, too.

Nigel is unblinking, jaw set. He cocks the hammer on his gun, a warning not to move. Not to flinch. Not to say a fucking word.

“Go back to bed,” he warns the young man at his back.

“What’s happened?” Q asks. “I had an incident. Don’t answer. Clear your throat if you’re alright.”

James does. “I’m sorry if we disturbed your sleep, sir,” he offers. The young man continues to rub his eyes before dropping his hand to his side.

“Your voice isn’t very loud,” he tells him. “Nigel - he’s being polite. You’re being angry, which means you’re scared.”

James just blinks. He ignores the muttering in his ear. A lot of things begin to make sense all at once, and James can’t help it - he laughs. “I’m sorry.” He holds up a hand when Nigel makes the barest motion towards him. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to laugh, but this is… it’s uncanny.”

“What’s uncanny?” Both Q and Nigel at once, though there is a “fucking” thrown in there from the brash man before him.

“We have very similar reasons for wanting to leave the lives which had us find them in the first place,” James says.

Nigel stands, as if to block the young man from his sight. What darkens his features now is a very real, very sincere threat - far beyond his boisterous preambles of menace before. Bond has known that fear, that tremendous surge of adrenaline that comes from wanting to keep safe what’s most dear. He knows and he lifts his hands, sitting slowly.

“Sweetheart,” Nigel says, “please go back to bed. You shouldn’t have come out.”

“But I have already. He’s already seen me.”

Nigel’s jaw flickers tense. Bond watches only Nigel now, not risking another look towards the young man he’s protecting.

“Anyway,” the young man continues, bare feet clicking against the floor as he pads by. Nigel snaps his name - Adam - and there’s a flurry of keystrokes through Bond’s earpiece. “You’re not supposed to bring this kind of business home.”

“I didn’t.”

“You’re also not supposed to shoot guns in the house, so you should put it down before your finger slips.”

“Adam,” Nigel snarls, as he continues towards the kitchen.

“Q,” James asks aloud. The keystrokes freeze.

“007, don’t you dare.”

“Stop,” James says, eyes turning for a moment from Nigel as though to look at Q who isn’t there. “Stop researching, stop typing, this is bloody incredible.”

“What is?”

“Our bloody similarities,” James laughs, glancing to Nigel again. “Look, you would assume I would come here prepared, and I assumed you would take my guns. Few people check earpieces.”

“007, stop talking.”

“You talking to some quack over in London?”

“He needn’t be so far, though I’m sure he could build a radio with a long enough range.” James shrugs. His hands are still up in a universal symbol of surrender. “My man and your Adam have a lot in common, it appears.”

“What would we possibly have in common beyond utter idiots for partners?” Q hisses through the mic. “You’ve done enough damage, James, he won’t speak to you anymore. Leave before you have to test the suit’s abilities in close quarters.”

Nigel wavers, though less due to Bond’s words than Adam blithely pouring himself a glass of milk in the kitchen. The big Romanian licks his lips apart, pensive, softening more when Adam makes a fussy sound and sucks a drop of spilled milk from his thumb. Slowly, Nigel releases the hammer of his revolver, but he leaves his hand atop it as he brings it back to the table and slowly sits again.

“He’s not involved in this,” Nigel lies. “He’s got nothing to fucking do with it. You want me, you have me, but leave him the fuck out of this.”

“That isn’t true.”

“Adam!”

“You forget how to answer your phone sometimes. You couldn’t run the networks.”

Q, despite his snarling moments before, makes a pleased sound at this. “Got him.”

“Goddammit, Adam. Angel. Please. Just go.”

“It’s my apartment, Nigel,” Adam reminds him, padding back towards him, not at all perturbed by James sitting at the table watching him. “And you woke me up.”

“Q, he looks just like you.”

“Excuse me?”

“Get on visual,” James says, pressing a finger to his ear to adjust the piece there and pulling his phone from his pocket.

“I’ll disconnect entirely. Have you gone completely mad? You’re going to show my face to a pair of wanted criminals. Well, one, the other no doubt has a far worse track list that no one’s bothered to look into, considering the Luddite disregard of cybercrime -”

“Who are you talking to,” Nigel asks, jaw still clenched firm in impatience when Adam stops beside him. The shirt lifts a little as he sips, brightly colored y-fronts flashing beneath.

“My partner,” James replies, ignoring Q’s pointed _I don’t know him_ to no one in particular in his ear. “Who is being a resolute pain in my ass at the moment. Look. Nigel. We are both men who more often than not end up in situations no one particularly wants to be in. And one way or another we have found...” He gestures to Adam, who takes another sip of his milk. “Something. Someone. Who makes us want to leave that life. To protect them, if nothing else.”

“He has nothing to do with this.”

“Nigel, you and I both know you’re not that stupid, and I’m fairly sure you’ve given me the benefit of the doubt. Could you consider my terms for his sake?”

It takes a moment of silence, pensive, as all four parties involved grow quiet. Nigel slowly turns his gaze aside, though his hand doesn’t leave his gun, and he looks to Adam at his side. The fucking kid’s half-asleep and grumpy, and Nigel’s heart clenches just to look at him. Beautiful little genius.

His Adam, for whom Nigel would move the goddamn world.

“You said we have similar motives,” Nigel says. “The same reason to want to leave all this fucking shit behind.” He licks his lips apart again and turns back to Bond. “Show me yours. I’ve already shown you mine.”

“James Bond, you will not,” Q hisses, even as James seeks through his phone for the most appropriate photo to show. He comes across one of Q asleep with the sun behind him, looking a lot like the lovely thing next to Nigel now. He leans forwards and slips the phone across the table for Nigel to take up on his own.

“That’s mine,” James tells him, ignoring the curse in his ear. “And I would burn the world down to keep him safe. I think you can relate.”

Adam leans across Nigel’s shoulder to look, as Nigel takes in the pretty thing that does, indeed, look shockingly like his Adam. He snorts, and it sounds almost like derision, before Bond watches a smile gather in the corners of his eyes. When he looks back to James, it’s with a different gaze, appraising still, but no longer combative.

Though they stand at opposite ends of a vast spectrum, it is a spectrum that is defined by its masculinity. Not only masculinity, but an idealized imagining of it that in combination with its violence and bravado requires of them a need to lay waste to reams of women in their bed. Neither man needs say how unusual it is to find another who does not meet these expectations. Neither man needs say how many unexpected battles it’s brought into their lives, let alone for the risk their occupations pose to their beloved.

“Cute,” Nigel says, trying to fight down a smile and failing beat by beat.

James retrieves his phone with a similar expression and regards it, looking through a few of the photographs before setting it away. “He’s cursing blue murder at me through the earpiece right now,” James remarks after a moment, and the voice in his ear gives an exasperated groan.

“You could have shown a worse photo,” Adam says, and James smiles at him next. 

“I still could.”

“You will not,” Q mutters

“How did you meet?” Nigel asks, with far less deliberation now as he refills their glasses, no longer a challenge in it.

“Work,” Bond answers, sliding his nearer. That there are four guns on the table before them matters no more than Adam seating himself in Nigel’s lap. The Romanian reddens a little at this, muttering what James assumes to be a curse in his native tongue under his breath. “You?”

“Work,” Nigel answers with a grin.

James takes up his glass with a smile and shakes his head. “How they don’t kill us is a mystery.”

“I could,” Q murmurs. “I bloody well could, James, you know that.”

“He’s having trouble hacking into your firewall,” James says after a moment. “Trying to find information, initially, I could use against you, but now I think it’s just on principle that he makes it through.”

“He won’t,” Adam says, eyes a little wider the more he wakes up. “I have recurring password changes and several proxy networks running at once to deter anyone from trying.”

“It’s bloody extraordinary,” Q says, and James can hear the softness of his awe.

“He thinks it’s extraordinary,” he passes on to Adam. “And for someone who runs an entire technical division of MI6, that’s quite the statement.”

Nigel’s eyes widen a little at this. James could swear that he pales. But the moment is quickly swallowed with a shot of vodka and a stiff shake of his head. “That means you’ve got no business with me. I’ve never been to fucking England.”

“I told you I don’t, directly. My business is with your associates’ associates. You’re simply who came up on our radar.”

“M’s going to have your head on a bloody pike,” Q sighs. “Christ, it isn’t an onion at all, is it?”

“He’s talking about onions,” Bond conveys to Adam, who flickers a smile at this.

“It isn’t,” Adam and Q say in unison, and Bond shakes his head as if caught by a static shock. Their voices sound bloody identical, even without Q having an accent.

“He’s made his own mix network,” Q says. “Ask him that. Ask him if he built his own.”

Bond does, and Adam nods, as if being asked whether the sky were blue. “Of course. Otherwise you’re at risk of your key being found out. If no one but you can even begin to decrypt the node locations themselves, there’s no hope of it being cracked.”

“Ask him if he wants a job at Q Branch,” Q mutters, though not at all displeased by this.

“What are you offering,” Nigel asks, before Bond has time to consider whether Q means his request genuinely, or he’s merely sulking over being outsmarted by someone who could damn near be his double.

“A full wipe,” James replies after a moment. “Complete removal of any name or alias from any place it could possibly be found.”

“That’s impossible,” Adam says.

“It’s doable,” Q counters, though James doesn’t bother to relay it.

“MI6 has no interest in you or your Adam,” James assures Nigel again. “We need names, we need those connections confirmed before we can go in. By that point neither one of you will exist.”

“How will I know?” Nigel asks. “You say that, but how the fuck will I know if it’s true or not?”

“I’ll confirm with Adam,” Q says, as Bond conveys this. “If he’ll let me talk with him. I’ll run him through the protocols, nothing confidential, but what we’ve done.”

“And if Adam isn’t happy with it?” Nigel asks, brow raised. He runs his hand against the young man’s back, rubbing slow, soothing circles between his shoulders. Adam leans against Nigel, nuzzling against his throat, and watching Bond from beneath a flop of hair.

“I’ll know if he’s lying or not,” Adam warns.

Q laughs, through the earpiece. “I’ll let him check it himself if he wants. His system, though. Not mine. I’m not letting anyone that bright anywhere near anything of ours, 007.”

“I am very smart,” Adam replies smugly, resting further back against NIgel as the other holds him near. “But I won’t fly to London, it’s much too far. I dislike planes, though I understand logically they will stay up. The statistics speak for themselves.”

“James, I need to meet this man.”

“Have we an accord?” James asks instead, ignoring Q’s quiet murmuring regarding planes and the dangers of them. “Just names, in exchange for you vanishing entirely, off of anyone’s radar, including our own.”

Nigel turns his head, nuzzling the brilliant creature who somehow loves him despite his reeking of vodka and delayed violence. His arms encircle Adam’s middle, uncaring of the show of affection even though Adam fusses a little, blushing. Uncaring too of the weapons left unattended. Already there is an understanding here, between two men who have shaped their lives in acts of unfathomable bloodshed, and found the wounds those damages rent in their beings staunched by clever fingers and brilliant minds.

“What do you say, angel,” Nigel asks. “We take what we have and call it a goddamn day on all of this.”

“I tried to call it a day already,” Adam answers, “when I went to bed.”

Nigel laughs, as Bond - hands atop the table - sends a text to Q promising to be home soon.

“On the work, darling,” Nigel tells him. “On all the cargo and all the bullshit inside it. Retirement, sparrow. How does that sound?”

“Very welcome,” Adam replies after a moment to think. “I could use the time to learn more algorithms.”

“Mine never rests on his days off either,” James comments, grinning at the heavy sigh in his ear. “Just talks to the cats and codes.”

“You have a cat?”

“Two of them. He does.”

“I do,” scoffs Q. “As if you don’t lavish attention on them. As if you don’t make up little beds for them with your suit jackets.”

“They don’t care for me very much,” Bond says to Adam, amused, before looking back to Nigel.

Nigel nods, once. Just that, but it’s enough that he feels a tension in his chest begin to unravel that he never imagined would be unroped from his ribs. He buries a sigh against Adam’s hair, kisses him once, and after a moment more to steady himself - dizzied by relief and vodka both - Nigel laughs.

“Right,” he says. “Let’s start at the top.”


End file.
